Answering the call: Guard experience aids Red Cross director of emergency services

After 23 years serving in the Missouri National Guard, Jamie Koehler of Cape Girardeau sought out a career that would allow her to work with and train volunteers and also use her experience as a soldier. That was four years ago. Now, as regional emergency services director for the American Red Cross in Cape Girardeau, she has trained hundreds of volunteers and spent thousands of hours helping area communities prepare for disasters. As winter and an important disaster anniversary approaches, Koehler's job isn't slowing down.

Question: What brought you back to your hometown, to this job?

Answer: I was looking for something and then when I saw this position I thought it was the perfect match between my military experience. ... I saw this as a great opportunity to work with volunteers, do something I knew and be able to contribute.

Q: How does what you accomplished in the National Guard carry over into this career?

A: I think, first off, a lot of emergency management carried over because the Missouri National Guard has a secondary mission, working with the governor, and so a lot of times they're used in emergencies and disasters. So I'd been exposed to work in emergency operation centers, responding to disasters -- the floods of '93, '95, Katrina -- so I've been around disaster responses. Plus, just the skills it teaches you in planning, decision making, leadership. I think all of the contributes quite a lot to this job.

Q: What's your role with the Red Cross and has it changed since you started here?

A: The position is regional emergency services director, and there really has been no change in the job. We have had a geographical change in the last couple years. We have two additional counties -- Butler County and Wayne County -- so that was additional work. I think the job has changed throughout the four years I've been here just because of the evolution of the program. The chapter is making really great progress at developing relationships with our communities and with emergency management, and so we're kind of in a different place from when I first began. And it's a good place. We're making really good progress.

Q: What are some of your day-to-day responsibilities?

A: Daily I'm recruiting volunteers. That's one of the most important things. Having 11 counties to respond to, the small staff we have can't begin to provide the services that we need to and so actually every community in our counties needs to have trained Red Cross volunteers in it to provide those services. So day to day, we work a lot with those communities in recruiting volunteers, training volunteers, developing plans that include things like how you can shelter and how we can feed people. A big piece of it is educating all the community members in our area about preparedness. The ice storm was just a classic example of how every single one of us needs to prepared to be able to support ourselves for a couple of days without any outside help.

We're getting ready for the 200th anniversary of the earthquake, next December. It'll be 200 years since the last major New Madrid earthquake event, so we're really using that as an awareness tool to help people realize if we had a major earthquake here it would be like what we saw in Haiti. All of us need to be prepared if we were trapped in our home with no outside help to be able to take care of ourselves for a few days.

Q: What are some high points of the four years you've been with the Red Cross?

A: What I enjoy most is the volunteers, honestly. Not only do they enable us to do what we need to do, they're such inspirational people to be around. They are sacrificing their own time, sometimes giving up family time or fun time in order to deliver Red Cross services. So not only do they inspire me they're really fun to be around, too. They make me laugh, they make the day enjoyable. That is definitely a high point of these four years.

As far as events go, I got to go to Tennessee this last spring and work a couple weeks over there. Several of our volunteers had gone before me, then I had gone in on the tail end of the operation. That was very significant. It reinforced that when you have a disaster there's a lot of attention the first couple of days and then it dies down and nobody pays attention anymore. And I was there weeks five, six and seven and there was still incredible amounts of people who still needed assistance, still needed reassurance, whose lives were just in turmoil.

Q: Do you do any volunteering in the community?

A: About the only thing that I have time to do outside of this is the Master Gardeners through the Extension office. I work with them, and one of my projects is working at the Oliver House in Jackson and maintaining their grounds. I help with some of the educational programs that they do. I wish I had more time for volunteering. I keep trying to volunteer over at the veterans home, and something always seems to come up that I don't get to do that.

ehevern@semissourian.com

388-3635

Pertinent Address:

2430 Myra Drive, Cape Girardeau, MO